Pros: Sturdy construction, replaceable antenna, and works for ordinary use.

Cons: The current Linux driver does not support "master" or "monitor" modes. This means you can't use this to set up a homebrew wireless AP or a wireless IDS. The adapter is larger than the USB standard permits: it will obstruct any horizontally or vertically adjacent ports. If space is an issue, you'll need to plug it in via a USB extension cord.

Overall Review: This uses the RTL8188SU chip. The Linux driver (as of kernel 3.18) is the "r8712u" driver in the staging tree.

Pros: When it works, it works well. When I added one of these drives to my storage array to replace a failed drive, I got a faster rebuild speed than with any other disk.

Cons: When it fails, it fails horribly. The second drive added to the array caused the controller card to lock up, requiring a reboot to fix.

Pros: At half speed (50% PWM), it moves a respectable amount of air and is nearly silent. There's a faint whine, but with my case, it's only audible if I place my ear right next to the air intake.

Cons: At full speed (100% PWM), it isn't silent, or even close to it. Almost all of the noise is the whoosh of moving air: I couldn't identify any motor whine or other annoying sounds.

Overall Review: The PWM support lets you pick what you want: move a moderate amount of air silently, or an enormous amount of air noisily.

Pros: The latches latch, the cable works, the data moves back and forth. What more is there to say?

Cons: None

Pros: Cheap

Cons: Cheap

Overall Review: A year ago, I purchased five of these hard drives for use in a RAID array. Since then, two of them have developed bad sectors and unrecoverable read errors. Because they're in an array, I just needed to pull the drives, run a surface scan to map out the bad areas, and put them back into service, but if I had been using them as standalone drives, I would have lost data. I'd say these drives are a good choice if a failed drive is a minor annoyance. If the integrity of individual drives matters to you, pick something else.

Pros: Compact, portable, and reasonably durable. It's got full-size keys, and it hasn't dropped or badly re-positioned any of them in the name of size.

Cons: The NumLock key controls whether the right-hand side of the keyboard is letters or numbers. Since most computers start up with NumLock on, you need to remember to turn it off before you start typing.